The State Department has approved the sale to South Korea of 36 AH-64E Apache Helicopters and hundreds of related air-to-ground munitions.
The State Department has recently approved a possible Foreign Military Sale (FMS) to the Republic of Korea of up to 36 AH-64E Apache attack helicopters and related equipment. These helicopters will supplement the Army’s current fleet of 36 AH-64E and replace part of the AH-1S Cobra helicopters about to be retired this year.
The request from Seoul included up to 76 T700-GE-701D engines for the Apache (72 installed on the twin-engine helicopters, plus 4 as spares), plus 456 AGM-114R2 Hellfire anti-tank missiles and 152 AGM-179A Joint Air-to-Ground Missiles (JAGM). The request also included additional sensors, rocket pods and additional ammunition, in addition to technical and logistics support services, for an estimated total cost of $3.5 billion (€ 3.14 billion).
The FMS to South Korea comes just days after Poland signed a contract for the sale of 96 AH-64E Apaches, which will make the country the type’s second largest user in the world. The contract with Poland comes one year after the approval of the corresponding FMS, as we reported here.
The contract with the Polish Wojska Lądowe, worth around $12 billion (€ 11.1 billion), includes a staggering 96 Apache attack helicopters to replace post-Soviet Mi-24 units and, like the South Korean request, additional services and ordnance. Poland requested 1,844 AGM-114R2 Hellfire missiles, 460 AGM-179A JAGM, 508 Stinger 92K Block I air-to-air missiles and 7,650 WGU-59/B Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II (APKWS-II) guidance sections to turn unmanned Hydra-70 rockets into guided projectiles.
Helicopters of South Korea
South Korea is upgrading its rotary wing fleet in recent years, with the Apaches being just the latest addition to a growing and modernizing fleet.
The Republic of Korea Army (ROKA, Daehanminguk Yukgun in Korean) is slated to replace older Bell AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters and MD Helicopters MD-500 Defender light helicopters with the indigenous KAI LAH (Light Armed Helicopter) from Korea Aerospace Industries, a design derived from the European Airbus H155 (the former Eurocopter EC155, itself a derivate of the Eurocopter AS365 Dauphin).
The American-built Bell UH-1 Iroquois/Huey and Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk are similarly being replaced and joined by KAI KUH-1 Surion twin-engine transport helicopters, a joint development by KAI and Eurocopter (now Airbus Helicopters) and based on the Eurocopter AS332 Super Puma.
South Korea, an operator of the Boeing CH-47 Chinook heavy transport helicopter since the late 1980s, is slated to also receive an additional upgraded version of the large helicopter in the coming years. Since 2016 the ROKA is also already operating AH-64E Apaches, with the new FMS providing additional airframes but still coming short of the expected fleet of 100 AH-64E attack helicopters.
The AH-64E
First produced by McDonnell Douglas in 1983, the Apache has now reached under Boeing the AH-64E Guardian version, in service since 2013. The older AH-64Ds can be upgraded to the newer -E standard and some operators, like the U.S. and British Army, are taking advantage of that option.
The AH-64E keeps the AN/APG-78 Longbow millimeter-wave fire-control radar (FCR) from the AH-64D Apache Longbow, housed in a dome above the main rotor, but also sports digital connectivity, the Joint Tactical Information Distribution System, the capability to control unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and the more powerful T700-GE-701D engines, giving the Guardian an increased speed, climb rate, and payload.
The U.S. Army also started work on a further upgrade, AH-64E version 6.5, comprising updated software and the integration of the new improved 3,000 shp T901 turbine engine, the same that will also equip the UH-60M. During 2020, Boeing delivered the 2,500th AH-64 Apache helicopter from its Mesa, Arizona, production line. More than 500 E-models have been produced since 2011, with additional orders accumulating, and more than 1,300 Apaches are currently in service with 19 countries.
Foreign Military Sales
The approval of a FMS is not, by itself, a proper sale, but the approval from the U.S. Government of a request from an allied country to buy military systems and the go ahead to proceed with the contract. As we reported in the case of Poland, after a FMS is authorized, the country has still to negotiate the final contract and additional time passes.
The final contract may also include offset deals, agreements to provide benefits (usually know-how transfer or local production) to the buying country. Poland recently signed offset deals with Boeing and General Electric worth nearly 1 billion zlotys ($255 million) to compensate for the Apache deal.
The main contractors for both the FMS to South Korea and the contract with Poland are the American firms Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Electric. The same industries were also recently involved in a huge FMS to Israel worth over $18 billion and involving up to 50 new Boeing F-15IA multi-role fighter aircraft (the Israeli-specific version of the F-15EX Eagle II) and 25 Mid-Life Update modification kits for the existing fleet of F-15I Ra’am multi-role fighter aircraft, to bring them to F-15IA standard.
